Police search for remains near Monroe County airport based on information from William Clyde Gibson

Gibson's information led police to act

May 19, 2012

Gibson

Written by

Harold J Adams

The Courier-Journal

Investigators are searching for human remains near the Monroe County Airport based on information supplied by murder suspect William Clyde Gibson III, police officials said Friday.

Police investigating the New Albany, Ind., man have “given us information that there might be human remains up here,” said Sgt. Brad Swain of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. “And we’re just giving it a good-faith effort to try and find if this guy is providing an accurate statement.”

Swain said a search in a cornfield adjacent to the airport, near Bloomington, Ind., began Thursday and continued Friday. “We’re doing some probing into the soil and taking soil samples” along with using cadaver dogs to determine whether digging is necessary, he said.

Gibson was charged last month in the murders of Christine Whitis, 75, of Clarksville, who was found strangled April 19 in his home on Woodbourne Drive, and of Karen Hodella, a 44-year-old hairdresser from Florida whose body was found in Clarksville after washing up from the Ohio River in January 2003.

The remains of Stephanie Kirk, 35, of the Charlestown area, were found in Gibson’s backyard on April 27, but he has not been charged in her death. She was last seen alive in late March as she left a friend’s New Albany home to meet a man at a bar.

On Friday, New Albany police Maj. Keith Whitlow would not speculate on whether Gibson may be suspected of other murders, “but I will say that we’re going to follow up every lead that we deem as credible” and cooperate with other agencies.

Whitlow said his department is following up on information developed in the Gibson investigation.

“Somewhere out there it’s possible that there are families that have missing loved ones, and if something we develop in this investigation ... in Floyd County or whether it be in another jurisdiction in another state, we’re going to continue to follow it up as long as we believe it’s fruitful,” he said.

Whitlow said the Monroe County search was not connected to the deaths of Whitis, Hodella or Kirk, and that any further probing there would be done by Monroe County investigators.

He said the search is not related to any known Monroe County case. Both he and Swain said it had nothing to do with the unsolved disappearance of Indiana University student Lauren Spierer, who was last seen June 3, 2011, after a night of partying in Bloomington.